


This Time I'm Not Leaving Without You

by Aurora0331



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, I know I've got WIPs don't come for me, Inspired by Gaga's You & I, Mentions of past abuse, Modern AU, One Shot, come get y'all juice, divergent as heck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 05:22:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20669993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurora0331/pseuds/Aurora0331
Summary: Sansa Stark has been living in hiding for almost three years since fleeing from her fiancé, Joffrey. But with his death and Cersei's arrest, she can finally return to tie up a loose end.





	This Time I'm Not Leaving Without You

Sansa’s car had been idling in the empty lot for almost twenty minutes. It had taken two days to drive here, halfway across the country, and here she was, losing her nerve at the last moment.

The bar looked just as she remembered – a squat, double brick building dressed up with a few well-placed lanterns and a lick of paint on the door. She remembered vividly the glow of those lanterns the last time she had been here, almost three years ago; she had seen them from the street through a blur of tears, her feet aching from the walk across town. Sansa had made it all the way from Joffrey’s apartment in those stupid stilettos she’d been wearing for her then-fiancé’s birthday party, and though she’d been almost hysterical from the humiliation she’d suffered at his hands that night, she’d known instinctively to come here, to the one safe place she knew.

Sansa glanced at her reflection in the rear-vision mirror. This place may not have changed, but she had. Her face had thinned out into womanhood – all cheekbones and a long, proud nose that she’d once hated but now loved for its resemblance to her father’s. Her hair was different, too – three days ago she had paid a hairdresser her whole week’s wages to try and resurrect her natural auburn colour, but the woman had pursed her lips and told her, in a tone not unlike her mother’s, that three years of brown packet dye had made that task impossible. She’d done her best, and Sansa’s hair was now a tawny russet, still several shades too dark. But it was better than nothing, and it made her look less severe, less cold; more like the girl she had once been.

Her body had also changed. By the end of her relationship with Joffrey, Sansa had become so thin she was almost waifish – but her new, normal, quiet life had allowed her to flesh out a little into a naturally curvaceous frame. She’d heard once that all the cells in the human body die and are replaced within seven years. Just a few more and there would not be a single part of her left that Joffrey had touched.

Since the last time she was in this place, Sansa had been living as a stranger. Across the country, in a place where no one knew her, she’d become Alayne Stone – a woman who had her face but was nothing like her, really. Alayne Stone worked in data management. She lived alone. She had short, emotionless relationships and few friends. She was always looking over her shoulder, always waiting to be recognized.

Sansa had tried to find the fun in it, the novelty of make-believe, of playing a role. Imaging herself as some glamorous actress, or else a spy undercover, she had managed to enjoy it for a while. But deep down she ached; she missed her home, her family, the innocence of her youth.

And she was always thinking about Sandor Clegane.

He’d been a constant presence, all throughout her awful relationship with Joffrey, her torment at his and Cersei’s hands. Gruff and snarling, Sandor had scared her, once; until she realized that he was the only person left in her life that wouldn’t hurt her. Time and again he stuck his neck out for her, stopped the beatings, cleaned her split lips and grazes with a tenderness that seemed impossible for such a big man – although all the while he would brusquely admonish her for bringing Joff’s ire down upon herself again. _Like she could help it. _In the end, she supposed Joffrey had noticed, because Sandor had eventually spent more and more time at the bar he owned and less and less as the Baratheon’s hired muscle. And that was when things became much worse for Sansa.

She shook herself. There were bad memories there; the pain and hurt could rise up again fresh as ever if you spent too long dwelling on them. With a sigh, Sansa smoothed her hair back and checked her makeup one last time. She’d been dreaming about this moment for so long that it felt almost surreal. Switching off the engine, she stepped out onto the baking tarmac and made her way to the shade the awning provided. The sign on the door read “CLOSED”, but it was after 11am and if he still kept his old schedule, she knew that Sandor would be inside now setting up for the day. Taking a deep breath to fortify her nerves, Sansa pressed her palm to the door and pushed.

It was dark inside. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust from the glare of sunlight outside, and so she heard him before she saw him.

‘Can’t you read? We’re closed.’

A fist closed around Sansa’s heart and squeezed it tight. That irritated, rasping voice, his way of grunting the words as if he really didn’t think you were worth the effort of enunciation – it all came back to her in a flood of emotion. For years, in her private moments, Sansa had played that voice in her mind over and over again, all the words he’d ever said to her until she ran out and had to dream up some more. But he was here now, real and tangible and grumpy as ever. Gods, how she’d missed him.

Sansa blinked rapidly, trying to make him out in the dim room. Slowly, her surroundings came into focus – and then there he was, standing behind the bar with a packet of straws in one hand and a scowl on his face. She met his eyes – storm grey, just as she remembered – and all the air left her lungs as if she’d been punched. Sandor’s heavy brows knit in confusion, and he opened his mouth to speak again, but before he could form the words she saw recognition dawn upon him and a storm of emotions passed across his usually stony countenance.

**

Sandor Clegane was dreaming. He had to be. Because there was no way that Sansa Stark, the woman who had haunted him for years and whom he had almost believed to be dead, had just walked into his bar on a fucking Tuesday morning. He drank in the sight of her, standing there haloed by the light filtering through the frosted glass pane in the door. She looked so different – her hair was all wrong, for a start. Her face had a chiselled look to it, now; where she had been angelically pretty in girlhood, she was now a regal beauty. Of all the hundreds of different ways he’d imagined her since the last time he saw her, nothing could have prepared Sandor for this.

Gods, how she’d plagued him. The little bird with the broken wing. When she was engaged to Joffrey, he’d lost many a night’s sleep to the memory of her screams as the little cunt had her beaten. What a useless piece of shit Sandor had been, standing by and letting it happen. There had been times when the only way to silence the riot of noise in his head was by finding oblivion in a bottle of whiskey – or something stronger.

But since the night she’d left, the dreams had changed. He still saw her face when he closed his eyes, heard her voice in the inescapable spaces of his mind, but the sounds that she made were very, _very _different, and it was a different kind of torture, too – one that he found he could bear a little easier. These days, he was almost sober. Almost.

Sansa shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other, and Sandor realized he’d been staring too long. He tried to find his voice, but it came out as nothing more than a croak when he said, ‘that you, little bird?’

Her face crumpled, then, and for a moment Sandor thought she might cry. _Please don’t_. That girl had shed enough tears for one lifetime. He heard her take a breath, long and tremulous, and she nodded once.

‘Hello, Sandor.’

Fuck him for a pathetic fool, but his knees felt ready to buckle at the way she said his name. _Why did you have to come here? _He thought desperately. Sansa moved closer, sneakered feet soundless on the carpet.

‘I wasn’t sure if you’d still be here,’ she told him, one hand reaching out to touch the polished wood of the bar. He wondered if she, like him, was feeling like a stiff breeze would tear her to pieces. ‘I came as soon as I heard. About Cersei.’

Aye, of course. Cersei’s arrest, along with Joffrey’s overdose two years ago, meant that it was finally safe for her to return. Gods knew why she’d want to. She’d known nothing but horror here. Sandor grunted. He had plenty to say, but didn’t know how. A long silence fell, in which he looked anywhere but her eyes, and then the words poured out of his mouth before he could stop them.

‘Thought they might have killed you, that night.’

He heard her exhale sharply, as if taken aback, and it made him angry. What the fuck else was he supposed to think? He’d offered to take her away, to keep her safe, and she’d disappeared like a ghost. It hurt what little pride he had to think of the alternative; that she’d preferred to take her chances alone than suffer his company. Sandor stared hard at the bar, counting the grains in the wood to calm his temper.

‘Sandor, I want to explain…’ her hand appeared in his field of vision, long fingered and pale as it reached towards him. He pulled back, shook his head roughly. He couldn’t do this now. He was too fucking raw.

‘You, uh…’ Sandor coughed, trying to clear the lump that had risen in his throat as he turned and busied himself with the coffee pot. His hands were shaking. ‘You want a coffee?’

‘Sure. Thanks.’

He could hear the smile in Sansa’s voice, but didn’t dare look at it for fear it would blind him. He jerked his head towards the couch in the corner, grumbling “take a seat” in a show of politeness that was really just a desperate attempt to put some physical distance between them. Obediently, she turned and walked away, and Sandor took a moment to gather his fraying nerves, releasing a breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding.

**

Sansa sat carefully on the old Chesterfield, smoothing her skirt along her thighs before pressing one palm to the cracked brown leather upholstery. Something thrilled in her at the thought that Sandor had kept it all these years, but then she chased the thought away. He was never the sentimental type.

Still, the feel of the leather beneath her fingertips was enough to bring back a storm of memories so vivid that Sansa almost felt herself transported through time. While Sandor noisily brewed coffee behind the bar, Sansa saw in her mind’s eye her younger self, scared and dying for comfort, coming through the door at closing time to find Sandor Clegane standing exactly where he was now. He’d known something was very wrong, instantly, and he’d taken her in his arms and held her the way she so desperately needed to be held, even though it was so unlike him. And he’d told her…

_I could take you away. _

She’d replayed those words countless times in quiet moments, staring at the ceiling of her bedroom unable to sleep, or else lost in thought on her long commute to work.

_No one would hurt you again. I’d kill them_.

Gods, how she had wanted to believe him. How she had wanted to be his heroine, saved by his strength and courage. But even then she had known it was impossible. One person can disappear much easier than two.

Her resolve had faltered again, though, when somewhere between his whispered words of comfort and his gentle embrace their mouths had met, unleashing a storm of passion unlike anything Sansa had known before or since. His mouth had tasted like whiskey, and she’d wanted to drink him in, drown in him.

Back in the present, she turned her attention to the arm of the sofa, fingers tracing the fabric until she found them. Four little holes, each no bigger than a button, where her heels had punctured the fabric. Sansa’s blood ran hot as she recalled the things her body had felt that night, right here on this very couch – the things Sandor had done to her. She’d been chasing that ever since; that sensation of being worshipped, eaten alive. She’d never found it, and deep down she had always known she wouldn’t. Her eyes strayed to Sandor again, pouring the coffee now with exaggerated concentration. There was a touch of grey at his temples that hadn’t been there before. His beard was fuller, too, and while the lines at the corners of his eyes were perhaps a little more pronounced than she remembered, she thought he looked good. Healthy. Not quite so angry. Sandor's hair was clean and swept back from his face, and that was new - he wore the familiar map of scarring on his face unapologetically now, and a bubble of warmth swelled in Sansa's chest at the thought that maybe he had learned to shake off some of the bitterness that had always weighed so heavily on him.

Sandor looked up then and caught her watching him, and something flashed in his eyes that made Sansa squeeze her thighs together unconsciously. _Please_, she thought desperately, as she watched him make his way around the bar. _Please don’t let me be too late_.

Sandor cleared his throat as he placed a steaming ceramic mug in front of her. He’d remembered how she liked it – just the smallest dash of milk – and that tiny gesture was enough to give her hope.


End file.
